For gamers, racing comes in many flavors. Futuristic hi-tech warships battle against Italian plumbers in karts for the attention of console owners' thumbs. In the real world, the racing menu is more limited, and in this country, the most popular flavor of racing is NASCAR. EA Sports' NASCAR NASCAR 08 is the series' debut on the PS3. While it's a huge step up in the visuals department, a lot of other key elements of this racer seemed to have been left back in the garage.
The grand lexicon of sports has no shortage of goofy words and phrases. Scrum, bogie, and fungo bat quickly pop to mind. The list got kicked up by one when NASCAR decided to name its latest design standard "The Car of Tomorrow." The NBA didn't label its new-look ball "The Bouncing Sphere of the Future," but NASCAR execs figured that a name that was both nonsensical and instantly outdated was just what the sport needed. Amateur philosophers can now ponder such unanswerable questions as, "If I drove the Car of Tomorrow yesterday, does that make it today?" In any event, the CoT makes its debut in NASCAR 08.
You can jump right into things and race through an entire season of Nextel Cup races (using the CoT in the races that it's scheduled to be used). You can also race the entire Nextel Cup series using only the CoT. Also available are the shorter NASCAR National series and the Craftsman Truck series -- the latter for folks who find something really sexy about racing pick-ups. The Whelen Modified series from last year's game didn't make the hi-def cut.
The first thing you'll notice when you hit the track is the huge graphics upgrade. It's not the prettiest racer available for the system, but it's a big leap over what fans of the series have gotten used to. Here, though, it's not just an aesthetic improvement. Being able to see more of the track more clearly is a giant boon to gameplay. It's now much easier to find the line and hit it. In the past, it could take a while to get used to the individual circuits. Knowing when to ease off the gas and when to cut the wheel were learned more from trial-and-error than from simply being able to look at and assess what the actual turn looks like. By PS3 standards, things are merely serviceable. Frame rate is solid, but crowd detail is virtually nonexistent.
On the audio side, the music you get to listen to -- at least to these Northern alt-rock ears -- kind of bites. The way I write reviews is that I do a lot of writing mid-game with a menu screen running in the background. Here it was painful. I still have a repeating loop in my head of a song with a line about a dude meeting some girl down by the fishing hole. Ugh. Tracks from Velvet Revolver and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club serve as a make-up. You can go into the settings and take offending songs out of the mix -- which I eventually did. One very cool thing about the audio is live updates from ESPN and on-demand replays of various ESPN podcasts. In-game, the sound does its job with lifelike engine sounds and the occasional comment from your pit crew. The comments are more about ambiance than anything else. You'll hear warnings about cars being above you or below you, but you're generally already aware of the location of nearby opponents.